Personification is when you give an object, thing, or animal the qualities of a human. So basically, every Disney film ever personifies animals. Finding Nemo would have been pretty boring if the fish just swam about saying “glub” occasionally.

Why do we personify?

• As human beings we relate better to things we give human qualities. That is why we name our teddy bears, and why I have 30 different nicknames for each of my cats. The feelings of an animal are very difficult for us to understand, so we give them human thoughts and feelings, which helps us to care about them in a story.

• We also give objects and the weather human qualities in stories. “The cruel wind cut through their armour”. Is the wind cruel? No. Can it cut things? Not without a few million years to work with. The wind is described this way to bring out our human emotions. We start to hate the cruel wind as we see it attacking the characters. We are drawn into the story and we are now desperate for the characters to get in a safe warm building.

So when you see personification in a story think about what that author is trying to make you feel or communicate to you. Think about what that wind would feel like if it was just ‘blowing strongly’, how does that compare to it being cruel and cutting?